American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century

How historical, social, and cultural forces shaped the psychedelic experience in midcentury America, from CIA experiments with LSD to Timothy Leary's Harvard Psilocybin Project.

Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators for one's private muse or part of a political movement? In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers studied psychedelics in a...